Malta Sketchbook #5: Tigne Battery - Roofscape

Tigne Battery - Roofscape
(Charcoal and compressed charcoal over two pages of A4 sketchbook)

A rather overcast day, but that lent a sombre aspect to this drawing of the concrete roofs of the Battery, looking out over the countryside. 

I wonder if it brings to your mind, as it does to mine, the eerily vacant townscapes of de Chirico? Or is it a case of fixing on a landscape a predetermined aspect? There's no doubt that, even allowing for the reduced lighting, the drawing has become more about me than the place itself. 

John Ruskin saw this practice of projecting our own moods onto trees, clouds or complete landscapes as misguided and branded it the pathetic fallacy.  His view was very influential but failed to kill it off: witness the work of Nash, Sutherland, Piper and a whole host of other painters down to the present day. 

Pension Kastelli

Pension Kastelli (Oil on canvas, 12 x 12 in) Private Collection

I painted this after our last trip to Crete and gave it to Pat as a Xmas present. It's a picture of Pension Kastelli, the place we stayed in in Chania and I'm posting it now because we're going back again!

Last year I was so dogged with poor health that there never seemed a time when a holiday would have been enjoyable. Things in the eye department have settled down now and we think a trip abroad to see the Spring flowers on Crete in May is just what the doctor ordered.

We decided on this almost immediately after seeing the John Craxton Retrospective at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Although he always rejected the label of Neo-Romantic, John Craxton was certainly influenced by the 19th century sources of that movement, William Blake and Samuel Palmer, as well as Picasso's Cubism and spent some time with Graham Sutherland in Pembrokeshire.

However, it was his discovery of the idyllic landscapes of Poros, Hydra and Crete that opened the way to paintings of breathtaking shimmering light with a fascinating technique using coloured lines "to explain the play of light on contours."

John Craxton: Landscape, Hydra (Tempera on canvas)

Of all the paintings in the show, I think it was the one showing asphodels that decided it for us - asphodels are always dead and shrivelled in September when we normally go on holiday: 

John Craxton: Reclining figure with asphodels.

New Work

Log Figure (work in progress)

Even though my two man show is currently running at Alnwick right now (still time for you to get up there and catch it!), I'm working out some new subject matter for my next show, which will be a solo effort throughout August in Newcastle .

I've been thinking about my Rock and Tree series and how that might be enlarged and expanded upon. The shades of Graham Sutherland and Paul Nash are sitting in the studio right now giving me advice and this is today's freshly started painting.

Sutherland Through the Hedge

Hedgerow No.1 (Work in progress)

Last night I set about quickly adding an horizon and a blue sky to the first of the Hedgerow paintings. Reviewing the result this morning, I realised how much my love of Graham Sutherland was becoming evident in this painting. There was no conscious decision to make that happen, but I can see it's there, I have no problem with it and in fact I was quite pleased when the influence was immediately commented upon at today's meeting of the Painters' Group.

The meeting was interesting in that I felt my work wasn't universally liked but that reinforced a renewed determination to plough my own furrow. I generally do that anyway, but in the last few years I think I may have drifted into market-driven thought patterns for understandable but unhelpful reasons.

Nest Forms

Nest Forms (etching, 12.5 x 21 cms)

Another week without painting. In a spirit of a glass half full, let's call it a period of retrenchment and reconsideration, rather than a block.

Some time ago I made myself a promise to have framed a small collection of prints I made at University. The actual framing has taken much longer than anticipated, but yesterday I collected them from Gallagher & Turner, the framers who've framed almost all of my work since I began to get serious about it.

This etching has always been a favourite of mine. It shows the influence of Graham Sutherland, I think, which is unsurprising given that I was about to write my dissertation on his Pembrokeshire landscapes. It was based on some drawings I did in what was then the Hancock Museum but which has now become part of the Great North Museum:.

Here's a relevant page from my sketchbook;


Bird objects (Rotring Art Pen in A4 sketchbook)

Old Drawings #53

Crustacean Root (Charcoal, compressed charcoal on A1 cartridge paper)

In 1999 I was doing research for my BA Dissertation on the Pembrokeshire landscapes of Graham Sutherland and in an effort to get first hand knowledge of the area that so inspired him, I took the opportunity of a stay in Swansea to go for the day to Picton Castle.

Everything I'd read told me that Sutherland had donated his considerable archive to Picton Castle in the form of the Graham and Kathleen Sutherland Foundation, so it came as a big disappointment when we got there to find that everything had been shipped off to Cardiff and the gallery space at the Castle was devoted to contemporary Welsh artists. Apparently funding for the Foundation had proved insufficient and all of Sutherland's papers, drawings, paintings had been lodged with the National Museum Wales.

But the trip wasn't wasted by any means. Before going back we had time to wander along the shores of the Eastern Cleddau where the shaly soil of the banks has fallen into the curious shapes that fascinated Sutherland and where the twisted roots of old oaks poke out into the air.

This drawing is one of three inspired by the roots of the Eastern Cleddau shore. Not done in a terribly Sutherland manner, but they are important to me. As each of them developed, accidental effects made them take on individual characteristics that the original roots didn't obviously possess. This one, for instance began to take on the look (at least to me) of some kind of lobster or other crustacean. These drawings represent an approach not yet explored but waiting for the time to be right.

Just to round this story off, I did get to see the Sutherland Archive in Cardiff. It was unbelievably thrilling to be able to sift through his sketchbooks, squared-up photographs, watercolours, prints and paintings. Definitely a trip to remember.

The Call of Blawearie

When you can't paint, paint something else.

One of the problems of a long layoff, whether enforced or voluntary, is that it can prove difficult to get back into an unfinished painting. My birthday celebrations, my travels to the US and various domestic matters have all interfered with progress on the painting of Grey's Monument. It now sits on the easel, glaring at me, daring me to get back in and spoil it. I don't believe I will spoil it, of course, but there's always that underlying fear when you've lost the plot a little.

So I thought I might be better employed ignoring it's baleful gaze and doing something else to work up some steam as it were. Not another painting, which might bring with it some of the same baggage, but a drawing. I've neglected my drawing woefully over the last couple of years, so turning back to it can only be a Good Thing.

In an attempt to clear my head completely of its most recent preoccupations, I thought I'd opt for different subject matter too. So I dug out this small sketch I made a while ago.

Blawearie sketch (pencil on A4 cartridge)

I did this in a strange place I know of in Northumberland, a few miles off the road on Bewick Moor. It's held a fascination for me since I first came across it and someday I hope to make a series of work about it; not having any transport of my own, however, makes this difficult.

Nevertheless, I spent some time today making this Conte drawing from the sketch.

Blawearie steps (charcoal and coloured Conte on A2 cartridge)

Evidently I'm in a Graham Sutherland mood today, although later experiments in Photoshop suggest the possibility of a different approach